Recommended Reading for Urban Sociology Comprehensive Exams
Last Updated: Summer 2011
Classical Foundations
1. Engels, Friedrich [1845] The Condition of the Working Class in England. New York:
Oxford University Press, 2009.
2. Tonnies, Ferdinand. [1887] Community and Society. Mineola, NY: Dover
Publications Inc, 2002.
3. Simmel, Georg [1903] “The Metropolis and Mental Life” (pp. 30-45) in P. Kasinitz
(ed.) Metropolis: Center and Symbol of our Times. New York: NYU Press, 1995.
4. Weber, Max [1921] “The City (Non-legitimate Domination)” (pp. 1212-1374) in G.
Roth and C. Wittich (eds.) Economy and Society. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1978.
5. Benjamin, Walter [c. 1935] “Paris: Capital of the Nineteenth Century” (pp. 46-57) in
P. Kasinitz (ed.) Metropolis: Center and Symbol of our Times. New York: NYU
Press, 1995.
The Chicago School
6. Park, Robert E. and Ernest W. Burgess. [1925] The City: Suggestions for
Investigation of Human Behavior in the Urban Environment. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1967.
7. Short, James. 1971. The Social Fabric of the Metropolis: Contributions to the
Chicago School of Urban Sociology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971.
(edited volume, read introduction and all 20 chapters.)
8. Wirth, Louis [1938] “Urbanism as a Way of Life” (pp. 58-97) in P. Kasinitz (ed.)
Metropolis: Center and Symbol of our Times. New York: NYU Press, 1995.
9. Whyte, William Foote. [1943] Street Corner Society. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1955.
10. Drake, St. Clair and Horace Clayton. [1945] Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life
in a Northern City. University of Chicago Press, 1993.
11. Walter Firey. 1945. “Sentiment and Symbolism as Ecological Variables,” American
Sociological Review, vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 140-148.
The Community Question
12. Gans, Herbert J. [1962] The Urban Villagers: Group and Class in the Life of ItalianAmericans. New York: The Free Press, 1982.
13. Whyte, William H. [1956] Organizational Man, Parts I and VII (pp. 3-62, 267-404).
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002.
14. Jane Jacobs [1961] “The Uses of Sidewalks” (pp. 111-129) in P. Kasinitz (ed.)
Metropolis: Center and Symbol of our Times. New York: NYU Press, 1995.
15. Gans, Herbert [1968] “Urbanism and Suburbanism as Ways of Life: A Reevaluation
of Definitions” (pp. 170-195) in P. Kasinitz (ed.) Metropolis: Center and Symbol of
our Times. New York: NYU Press, 1995.
16. Kasarda, John D. and Morris Janowitz. 1974. “Community Attachment in Mass
Society,” American Sociological Review, vol. 39, no. 3, pp. 328-339.
17. Wellman, Barry and Barry Leighton. 1979 “Networks, Neighborhoods, and
Communities: Approaches to the Study of the Community Question.” Urban Affairs
Review. vol. 14, no. 3, pp. 363-390.
18. Fischer, Claude S. 1982. To Dwell among Friends: Personal Networks in Town and
City. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982.
19. Fischer, Claude. 1995. “The Subcultural Theory of Urbanism: A Twentieth-Year
Assessment,” American Journal of Sociology, vol.101, no.3, pp. 543-577.
20. Hampton, Keith and Barry Wellman. 2003. “Neighboring in Netville: How the
Internet Supports Community and Social Capital in a Wired Suburb.” City and
Community vol.2, no.3, pp. 277-311.
Political Economy Approaches
21. Castells, Manuel. 1977. The Urban Question: A Marxist Approach. Cambridge: The
MIT Press, 1977.
22. Bluestone, Barry and Bennett Harrison. 1982. The Deindustrialization of America:
Plant Closings, Community Abandonment, and the Dismantling of Basic Industry.
New York: Basic Books, 1982.
23. Friedman, John and Goetz Wolff. 1982. “World City Formation: An Agenda for
Research and Action,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. vol.6,
no.2, pp. 309-344.
24. Mollenkopf, John H. 1983. The Contested City. Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1983.
25. Gottdiener, Mark. 1985. The Social Production of Urban Space. Austin: University of
Texas Press, 1985
26. Logan, John and Harvey Molotch. [1987]. Urban Fortunes: The Political Economy of
Place. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007.
27. Zukin, Sharon. 1989. Loft Living: Culture and Capital in Urban Change. New
Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1989.
28. Stone, Clarence N. 1989. Regime Politics: Governing Atlanta, 1946-1988. Lawrence:
University Press of Kansas, 1989.
29. Walton, John. 1993."Urban Sociology: The Contribution and Limits of Political
Economy," Annual Review of Sociology. vol. 19, no.1, pp. 301-320.
Urban Poverty and the Ghetto Underclass
30. Wilson, William Julius. 1987. The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the
Underclass, and Public Policy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1987.
31. Wacquant, Loic [1989] “The Ghetto, the State and the New Capitalist Economy” (pp.
413-449) in P. Kasinitz (ed.) Metropolis: Center and Symbol of our Times. New
York: NYU Press, 1995.
32. Anderson, Elijah. 1990. Streetwise: Race, Class, and Change in an Urban
Community. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.
33. Massey, Douglas S. and Nancy A. Denton. 1993. American Apartheid: Segregation
and the Making of the Underclass. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993.
34. Bourgois, Philippe. 1995. In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Bario. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1995.
35. Jargowsky, Paul A. 1997. Poverty and Place: Ghettos, Barrios, and the American
City. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1997.
36. Small, Mario Luis and Katherine Newman. 2001. “Urban Poverty after The Truly
Disadvantaged: The Rediscovery of the Family, the Neighborhood and Culture”
Annual Review of Sociology. vol.27, no.1, pp. 23-45.
37. Venkatesh, Sudhir Alladi. 2000. American Project: The Rise and Fall of the Modern
Ghetto. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000.
38. Small, Mario Luis. 2004. Villa Victoria: The Transformation of Social Capital in a
Boston Barrio. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.
39. Patillo, Mary. 2007. Black on the Block: The Politics of Race and Class in the City.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.
40. City & Community, Volume 7, Number 4, 2008: “Symposium on the Ghetto” (p.347398):
 Haynes, Bruce and Ray Hutchinson. “The Ghetto: Origins, History,
Discourse”
 Gans, Herbert. “Involuntary Segregation and the Ghetto: Disconnecting
Process and Place”
 Beveridge, Andrew. “A Century of Harlem in New York City: Some Notes on
Migration, Consolidation, Segregation, and Recent Developments”
 Vigil, Diego. “Barrio Geneology”
 Blokland, Talja. “From the Outside Looking in: A “European” Perspective on
the Ghetto”
 Monteiro, Circe. “Enclaves, Condominiums, and Favelas: Where Are the
Ghettos in Brazil?”
 Chaddha, Anmol and William Julius Wilson. “Reconsidering the Ghetto”
 Small, Mario Luis. “Four Reasons to Abandon the Idea of “The Ghetto””
41. Sampson, Robert. 2008. “Moving to Inequality: Neighborhood Effects and
Experiments Meet Social Structure” American Journal of Sociology. vol. 114, no. 1,
pp. 189-231.
42. Dominguez, Silvia. 2011. Getting Ahead: Social Mobility, Public Housing, and
Immigrant Networks. New York: NYU Press, 2011.
The Post-Industrial City
43. Fishman, Robert [1990] “Megalopolis Unbound” (pp. 395-412) in P. Kasinitz (ed.)
Metropolis: Center and Symbol of our Times. NYU Press, 1995.
44. Sassen, Saskia. [1991] The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2001.
45. Davis, Mike [1992] “Fortress Los Angeles: The Militarization of Urban Space” (pp.
355-368) in P. Kasinitz (ed.) Metropolis: Center and Symbol of our Times. NYU
Press, 1995.
46. Neil Smith. 1996. The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City.
New York: Routledge, 1996.
47. Janet Abu-Lughod. 1999. New York, Chicago, Los Angeles: America’s Global
Cities. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999.
48. Dear, Michael (ed.) 2002. From Chicago to L.A.: Making Sense of Urban Theory.
Sage Publications, 2002.
49. Lloyd, Richard. [2006] Neo-Bohemia: Art and Commerce in the Postindustrial City.
Routledge, 2010.